Yes, I thought so <nods>. This joke is actually mentioned on the Wikipedia page about
Jewish humour (under "Types of Jewish humor">"About Other Religions").
The page introduces Jewish humor as "verbal, self-deprecating and often anecdotal humor" - which all applies to this joke, too - with a long tradition. It proceeds to outline two elements of that tradition, and both of those, I would say, return in this joke:
Quote:Jewish humor is rooted in at least two traditions. The first is the intellectual and legal methods of the Talmud, which uses elaborate legal arguments and situations often seen as so absurd as to be humorous in order to tease out the meaning of religious law. The second is an egalitarian tradition among the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe in which the powerful were often mocked subtly, rather than attacked overtly -- as Saul Bellow once put it, "oppressed people tend to be witty."
The first tradition shows up in the first half of the joke. One could say that the Pope is shown arguing like one of those wise men in the Talmudian tradition, teasing out religious lessons from pedestrian acts. And the Pope's explanation of Moishe's lessons does indeed hint at some deeper religious truths - and by the by ascribes the greater, more profound wisdom regarding those to the Jew.
But instead of just letting it stand like that, the second half of the joke then proceeds to laugh all that poohah apart again. One could speculate that this is actually a self-deprecatory mocking of one's own community's traditional elders - with the Pope still functioning as proxy for the wise Jews of Talmudian anecdote. But one could also submit that this 'taking down a peg' actually again
reinforces the notion that the more profound wisdwom is always the more plain, and less bombastic one - the one that Jews are better at than those self-important Catholics who can't take a joke..
The second half of the joke clearly serves to show up how the Jews
can take a (self-deprecatory) joke. Yet, like a double-edged sword, of course it actually mocks the
pope as much or more as Moise... and this fits with the Wiki description of the powerful oppressor being "mocked subtly, rather than attacked overtly" - being mocked through the seeming
appearance of self-mocking.
Nobody can go aggro at a Jew making a joke that seemingly makes another Jew (Moishe) look stupid - even when it's clear to all that it's actually the
Pope who's being made to look like a fool. Clever - in the kind of cleverness that Jews have needed to survive.
Well, all that - or I'm
waaaay overthinking this
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